Primal scream
by bluehairdontcare
Summary: Angsty Dean! Dean is struggling with depression, PTSD and drinking whilst Sam struggles with knowing the right way to help him. An old friend comes to them with a case which pushes Dean to his limit! (T/W: Some graphic description of torture, drug abuse, suicide etc. No slash) - Set after On the head of a pin, S4 :)
1. Chapter 1

**Summary: **Set after On the Head of a pin in Season 4 - I thought that this episode would be way more emotionally crushing for Dean than the episode following it portrayed so I felt the need to make a little angsty saga to fit in after Dean's conversation with Castiel in the hospital. I love me some angsty, emotionally hurt Dean (we all gotta love something don't we?) and I wanted to address his clear depression, PTSD and alcoholism and how Sam would handle that. I also added a new character who just came to me when I was trying to sleep doing my usual thing of dreaming fanfics (is that sad? i dunno).

**Authors note: ** The story starts off with a bit of background on the upcoming hunt (as it usually does in the opening few minutes) of the show)

I previously published a part of this story but I took it down to rework it so if you read that sorry and bare with me :) this is my first fanfic so please be gentle - although comments and reviews would be greatly appreciated :)

**Disclaimer: **supernatural and the boys belong to Kripke and the CW (despite my wishes!)

* * *

The cold dark metal, almost green with canker, falls into hardened waves of fabric over the weeping face of the angel, sitting in a perpetual moment of aggregate agony. Although the grass on the rest of the plot is green as it should be, no grass grows anywhere near it – it seems to shrivel away from the base of its melancholy shadow as if the very ground around it is diseased.

"God Pete, I really don't want to do this," the first boy to approach the statue whimpered with the pitch of an exhausted frat pledge.

"Don't be a pussy Brad, it's just a story," Pete laughed, "think about what the guys in the other Frat's have to do tonight? I would rather sleep here than do that elephant walk thing if I were you"

Brad agreed by swilling down a mouthful of Vodka from the large bottle in his hand.

"Mmhmm… yeah" he whispered as he stared at the statues pained face, and its cold, dead eyes.

"Hah! K well, see you in the morning man...and don't even think about leaving cause we'll be camped out at the gate" Pete sniggered, slapping his meaty jock hand against the smaller boy's back. As he walked away he yelled out over his shoulder, "Watch out for its eyes man! If they go red, you're done for!" he cackled.

Brad shut his eyes for a moment and took a sharp exhale of breath to convince himself he wasn't scared. With resolution he strode towards the waiting lap of the metal angel.

"Please, please just don't kill me ok?" he said, feeling stupid. He lay in its lap and tried to feel as though it was protecting him – it _was _an angel after all – that made him feel a bit better. With its strong hands against his back, he slowly fell asleep cradled by the dark figure. Suddenly, on the edge of deep sleep he was ripped back to the surface of consciousness by the distinct feeling that the hands were gripping him tight like a boa constrictor. He jolted his eyes open to stare at the things face – the cold, metal eyes were turned towards him, glowing deep red and dripping bloody tears down its face. As Brad let out blood curdling screams and tried to wiggle out of its embrace, it leant over and whispered, "_The war is in your mind – you can't hide – Hell is on earth". _Finally he managed to squirm free and fall onto the dead grass beside it in a tangle of limbs. He gathered himself into an approximation of standing and swung in the direction of the exit, as he ran, he could almost feel its stare boring into his back. He ran and screamed distorted wails of panic until he was well and truely right past the other boys who were waiting hidden in the distance.

"What the fuck?" one yelled as they watched him dart past them, his face contorted in utter terror. When the others walked back to the statue curiously wondering what had happened, the angel was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Dean had never felt so utterly destroyed as he did right now. Lying in a hospital bed does tend to make you feel weak and pathetic, you were either loomed over as people stood or you lay prostrate at a slightly too high level when they sat. Either way hospitals made Dean feel awkward. He could feel his hands shaking and his legs tensing, he was clammy and felt almost delirious like the room was pulsing. He was trying not to sleep because he knew what was waiting in the back of his eyelids, like little movie screens for his greatest horrors. He was tired, but then again he couldn't remember the last time he wasn't tired. He turned his head and looked out the door, he was in a room right next to a nurses station, they had moved him to this room quite early on and always left his door open, he wasn't entirely sure why, but he could feel them fussing around out there, always with one eye and one ear to his room. Dean was trying not to think. He didn't want to think about anything because when he did he felt the overwhelming, crushing weight of guilt pounding down against him until he felt his entire body go soggy with despair. But its very hard to stop yourself from thinking when you're alone in a room with nothing on TV and no alcohol and no hunt and no anything, his brain was just trying to 'entertain' itself after all, a brain needs to think. And all it could think about was what Alastair had told him and what Cas had told him, all it could think about was pain and misery and guilt. A nurse went to walk past the room but diverted into it when she caught a glimpse at Dean's utterly despondent face.

"Hey there honey, how're you feeling?" she said, putting a friendly hand against Dean's. He wished she hadn't touched him, he felt raw all over and he was shuddering. He didn't say anything he just sort of half smiled.

"Oh dear! You're shaking!" she exclaimed, as Dean had rightly assumed, the shaking was in fact palpable.

"No I'm fine" he assured her weakly. He wasn't entirely sure why he was shaking, whether it was the emotional exhaustion, the painkillers or just that he hadn't had a drink. He liked to pretend it was just some weird side effect of the drugs. He wondered where Sam was; he had been popping in and out of the room anxiously going for 'coffee' the whole time Dean had been there. He wished he would come and get rid of the nurse. The nurse looked at him with concern as though the shaking wasn't the first thing she'd noticed about him that worried her. They knew how important it was to pick up even the smallest signs – to her he seemed preoccupied and had a sad countenance and was jumping wildly from almost catatonic to hysterical agitation, she had also noticed his screams.

"You mind if I ask you some questions?" she asked. Dean looked hesitant. "Don't worry sweetheart, just to check if we need to add any sleeping pills, just stuff like that no big deal"

"uh ok…" Dean was still wary.

"Ok how much do you sleep a night?" she asked holding her pen to his chart.

"Uh… I don't know… 4-5 hours…"

"A night?"

"Yeah…every couple of days" he said quietly. He was too exhausted to lie.

"Ok," the nurse said as she scribbled something down with big worried eyes. She already knew how bad his sleeping was. She and the other nurses that had the night shift had witnessed his fractured sleep, periods of restless horrible unconsciousness punctuated by waking in sweaty terror.

"What about alcohol? How much do you drink a week?"

"mmm I don't know, I have to sleep sometime so… somewhere in the high 50's"

"Right uh…what about eating? How's your appetite?"

"Not hungry" he coughed staring at his hands.

"Ok and do you often feel fatigued or tired?" she asked. Dean nodded. Tired. '_I'm tired Sammy…I'm just done'_. Yes, tired.

"And are you still doing the things you like to do? I mean… do you still like to do them?" she asked, she knew she was now heading towards the territory of not being able to hide what she was asking questions about.

"Uh… no not really" he huffed, the thought of sex was exhausting, the thought of hunting was exhausting, in fact, the thought of doing anything, even things that had once brought him pleasure was just _exhausting._ The nurse patted his arm again with a satisfied smile, "Ok, thanks sweetie" she said with lingering worried eyes before leaving him alone again.

* * *

"Are you a relative?" the doctor asked, as he stood in the doorway of Dean's hospital room. Dean was asleep (although very restlessly), and the only other figure in the room was the contemplative face of a dark haired man in a trench coat.

"…A relative?" Castiel replied, he wasn't sure at first whether the doctor was talking to him or not.

"Of Mr. Plant's?" the doctor said, it was an obvious question but he forgave the man as he assumed that Cas had been there a long time and his brain had gone into an exhausted fog. Although really, Cas had only just returned to check on Dean once he knew he was sleeping deeply through painkillers and exhausted defeat.

_"I know our fate rests with you"_

_"Well then you guys are screwed... I can't do it Cas, its too big… Alastair was right; I'm not all here… I'm not... I'm not strong enough… I guess I'm not the man either of our dads wanted me to be… find someone else… its not me"_

Every time Cas had turned to look at Dean as he spoke, Dean would look the other way and grimace with a silent wish that the tears would stop. Cas knew he had to leave the room for a while, because he appreciated how embarrassed it made Dean to show weakness. He was like a deflated sack of flesh, dead eyed and fragile lying there, and it broke Cas's heart to see that. He knew that the second he had vanished Dean would sob alone in the room until his breath hitched and he eventually fell asleep in utter resignation.

"I uh… no, I'm a… friend" Cas replied to the doctor, who he knew was a kind hearted man, even if he had a slight messiah complex.

"Are you two close?"

"No I think the distance I am maintaining is appropriate" Cas said, looking between himself and Dean.

"Uh" the doctor laughed a little, "no I mean are you a close friend of his?"

Cas paused for a long time before answering, he looked over at Dean, even as he slept he could see the pain; he didn't feel like he had the right to say he was a close friend.

"Yes… yes we are" he replied anyway.

"Ok well then perhaps you could answer a few questions for me?" the doctor said gesturing for them to move outside the room.

"So first of all, on admittance, it was stated that Mr. Plant had been mugged? Is that correct?" Castiel didn't reply he just stared at the doctor until the man continued. "The injuries and the concussion he attained have been treated but there a few other issues we've noticed during his stay that I think are perhaps more pressing… one of our nurses spoke to him and has raised some concerns about his mental health… are you aware or have you noticed if he has any issues in that area?"

"Yes his mental health is a matter of concern, believe me," Cas rolled his eyes slightly so that they landed back towards Dean.

Dean spent the first little while after he got out of hell, in a false high. He was re-energized towards hunting in a way that he hadn't been in a long time, now he saw it as a way of atonement for all the horrible things he did in hell. He was saving people, and that was important. But just wanting to be fine doesn't necessarily make it so. They say it's common for memories of trauma to become removed from the conscious mind, not necessarily forgotten, just hidden, perhaps out of shame or fear. But they're still there, just covered by cotton wool that's slowly being pulled apart. The fibers stretch and become opaque until it starts to rip, tiny gaps where the memories poke through. All it needs is one last pull for it to rip apart completely. Alastair was that last pull.

"He has been having very violent nightmares…he had to be checked on repeatedly throughout the night as we were afraid he might hurt himself which is why we moved him closer to the nurses station… last night he was screaming so loudly and thrashing around that we had to sedate him…" the doctor spoke softly in a way that doctors are taught to when imparting difficult news. "We want to get a psych consult in… would that be ok?"

"I…I don't think Dean would like that," in fact Cas _knew_ he wouldn't.

"I think perhaps, we should send one anyway" the doctor smiled (_I know best, I am the doctor here – _He was obviously thinking)

The doctor nodded and went off to call for a psych consult, while Cas stood in the doorway staring at Dean. He wasn't sure if Dean would want to see him when he woke up, so he left.

When Sam came back into the room from yet another coffee run he was met by the sound of Dean's gruff voice yelling at an unsuspecting psychiatrist.

"Mr. Plant please calm down, the staff have noticed you seem to be suffering from mental health issues… the doctor spoke to your friend who suggested this was a correct assumption…"

"What friend?" Dean hissed, stressing the word friend in a way that said 'what ever person said that is no friend of mine'.

"I don't need to be Sigmund Frued-ed by you pill pushing ass hats… _I - _am fine," he yelled.

"What's going on?" Sam said as he shuffled in to the room with his hands held up and his forehead scrunched.

"The doctor requested a psych consult," the little dark eyed psychiatrist answered now rather timidly.

"Uh what for?" Sam replied.

"Right, that's it, I'm leaving, time to go Sammy," Dean huffed before the doctor could answer as he began pulling out his IV lines and nasal cannula.

"Mr. Plant! That is not advised! Please just let me ask you a few questions"

But Dean wasn't interested in changing his mind. He had been there long enough, and besides, he was feeling a serious need for a trip to the bar. Dean scrambled into his clothes and out of the room as Sam and the psychiatrist watched him helplessly.

"Dean-"

"Let's go Sammy"

"Come on man just –"

"Nope"

The psychiatrist looked at Sam knowingly. Once Dean had left the room Sam turned and smiled, "Uh thanks anyway I guess"

"Sir, listen, it would be in your brother's best interest if you could talk him into talking to someone, a lot of the time these sorts of things go undiagnosed and it can be potentially… dangerous"

Sam thought that the doctor was perhaps being a bit overdramatic but asked anyway, "What do you think is wrong?"

"Well I didn't get the opportunity to talk to him properly so I couldn't say for sure… I mean, _apart_ from his clearly depressed affect, one of the nurses asked him about his eating, sleeping, drinking, energy levels, that sort of thing and his answers were worrying…. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised to find he fit the diagnostic criteria for Major Depression and PTSD and as is _very _common he seems to be self-medicating with alcohol as well…but as I said before, I would need to conduct a proper interview for that" the doctor stopped to consider for a moment, "Has your brother returned from serving in the war recently by any chance?"

"Uh…" Sam hesitated, wondering what sort of thing Dean had been screaming in his sleep, "…yeah pretty much"

The psychiatrist nodded his head knowingly, almost solidifying Sam's assumption that Dean had been yelling out things in his sleep that could be misconstrued as war trauma.

"You're… worried about him, aren't you" the psychiatrist said blankly before Sam could hurry after Dean.

"Yeah I am" Sam admitted. Sam was in fact _really _worried about Dean. He had been worried the whole time Dean had been back, which gave Sam perfect justification for doing what he knew he shouldn't be doing. He couldn't see that the demon blood was _just_ as bad a problem – to him it was justified, he was getting stronger; he was trying (and in his mind, succeeding) to take Dean's role. Ever since Dean got back, Sam could actually _see_ the internal battle raging in Dean's head, written all over his face. He couldn't image how big the rest of the iceberg was, if this was just the tip. Dean had always been the strong one and now he wasn't.

The doctor scrunched up his face and let out a breath, "You know what? Here… I'm going to prescribe this… generic Wellbutrin… read up on the side effects, try to get him to take it and if you can start him on it, bring him back to me after three weeks so we can talk again"

Sam nodded and took the prescription; "thanks, I'll try" he said trying his best to smile. The doctor clearly cared and Sam wished he could actually help. He rushed after Dean, who was probably in the car already, possibly already gone. Dean was still sore and weak but he was also determined to get the fuck outta there.

But Sam found Dean sitting in the passenger side of the Impala and with his head against the doorframe. Dean looked so vacant and hazy and ashamed; he was just staring at the dashboard as though it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen.

"Dean... Dean?"

"mmhmm?"

"Are you ok?"

"Yup"

"You know you could have just talked to the guy… maybe he's right"

Dean turned and glowered at Sam with utter repugnance plain on his face.

"Don't look at me like that Dean! You can't deny that you haven't been so… stable lately"

"Hah! That's rich coming from Mr. Demon blood over here"

"Dude, its not a who's more fucked up competition…I just mean, you haven't been sleeping, you've been having nightmares, you have been drinking like a goddamn fish and you are totally beat" Sam rattled off each point, counting them on his fingers like a lawyer summarizing the points of his case.

"Sam, how about not doing this right now huh? Actually, how about we don't do this ever, ever again?"

"Fuck Dean just TALK to me, _why _is it so hard for you?"

That one was a little too close to home. Why the fuck is it so hard?

"What's the point Sam? Hmm? Seriously, what? So I start spouting my mouth off, talkin' about every little thing that eats at me while we watch the world roll on over the cliff? Ye-ah, No thanks"

"…Right ok, so I guess we aren't gonna talk then"

"Nup"

The front seat of the Impala still had a little blood on it from the drive to the hospital. Dean couldn't remember the drive and he was slightly annoyed that Sam didn't think to put down a fucking towel. Dean knew that Cas had told Sam about him breaking the first seal by now, and that thought made his stomach roll. So he stared fixedly at a random point on the dashboard to avoid Sam's face. His general feeling of guiltiness -everything is my fault – had quadrupled in the past few days to the point at which he could no longer continue to bolster himself up when he was down by reminding himself he was a hero, or strong or saving people. Watching himself rip the eyeballs out of someone as they tried to cry or watching Alastair do the same to him, every time he tried to sleep, was not nearly as bad as the disillusioning realization that he was hopeless and things were helpless. And the flashbacks and anxiety had gotten much, much worse since his little tangle with Alastair – he was right, it _was_ stupid to think that getting Alastair back would somehow _cure _him. No, all it did was make him believe he was no better than that rancid, pussy sore of a demon. Plus there was the added _wonderful_ new news that he had begun the apocalypse purely due to his weakness. Now no matter how much anyone told him '30 years is longer than anyone would hold out', all he could think was 'but dad did'.

**tbc**

* * *

**A/N: Woo thats chapter one done! Im working on the next few chapters right now so please leave me a review and keep reading! x**


	2. Chapter 2

Sam drove all the way back to Bobby's. The fact that Dean didn't want to take over the driving at any point worried Sam. Dean just slept the whole trip or stared vacantly out the window or hissed down huge mouthfuls of the whisky he'd found under the seat. Sam knew the doctor was right about Dean, but he also knew from experience that there was _no_ way Dean would ever talk about everything. All Sam had gotten out of him so far was a couple of thumbnails and any information that had become literally impossible to hide. As they pulled into Bobby's yard Dean was asleep and twitching and murmuring desperate pleas for someone to stop something – Sam didn't know who or what and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Bobby knocked on Dean's window and awoke him with a start.

"FUCK!" Dean yelped, he looked around for a while, confused and disoriented. When he saw Bobby's concerned face staring in at him, he frowned and swept his hand at Bobby as though to say, "leave it alone".

"How you feelin'" Bobby asked as he pulled three beers from the fridge, once the three of them were back inside the warm red cocoon of a house.

"Like 50 shades of crap, but hey, you know me" Dean growled. He just didn't have the energy to be jovial. He stood up, suddenly aware that he wasn't in the mood to socialize, and shuffled drunkenly up to the bedroom. He would have just passed out on the couch if he could but he didn't want them to see him in one of his fearful fits of disturbed and _disturbing _sleep.

"Not good" Bobby said shaking his head as Dean slumped up the stairs.

"No, not good. at. all" Sam spat out heatedly.

"That stupid ass is gonna drink himself to death before he ever admits he's hurtin'" Bobby rumbled.

"Yeah, and he's well on the way there too"

Bobby lifted his eyebrows and shrugged, "We just gotta give him some time"

Sam agreed silently and they continued to sit, both of them scraping their brains for ways of getting through to Dean, keenly aware that the one thing they _didn't _have was time. But all it did was make Sam more certain that he _needed _the demon blood booster – that he _would _need it for the times to come. He knew it was wrong but he also knew that things were getting heavy and he needed to be able to carry the weight.

Dean sat on the bed clutching a bottle of Jack and flicking through the channels, half of which were just static, until he settled on a re-run of Gilligan's island. He just needed something to distract him until he was drunk enough to pass out.

He stared at the TV through the tawny glow of the whisky as he sloshed it against the sides of the glass and wished he were on a deserted island where no one could find him. He tilted his head back and poured a steady flow of alcohol down his throat until he had filled his cheeks. He swallowed with a splutter and wondered what kind of idiot would want him to save the world… a thought which was only made worse by the intense creeping feeling of a wakeful sleep approaching – it was going to be another one of those nights, alcohol or not. Just as he started drifting away into distraught unconsciousness his phone started vibrating and pulsing loud rock music from his pocket. Dean scowled at it until he realized who it was. Alexis Luz.

Alexis Luz was beautiful, he remembered. She was that sort of dark haired, dark skinned Latin looking beautiful and she knew it too. But not in a stuck up kinda way, just in a way that made you go, damn that girl knows who she is. She grew up in Mexico City in a tiny house with 3 rooms and 8 occupants. Well, that is until the day there were still 3 rooms and 1 occupant. The house was stuck up against a whole lot of other little houses like a house lasagna; Alexis always noted that this set out, for some reason, seemed to perpetuate crime. Their neighbours used to have dog fights in their front yard, Alexis could hear it from her room. For as long as she could remember she knew the evil of humans. This fact was further proven to her when one by one her family began to dissipate from 8 to 1. But it was nothing supernatural, just people. All of her brothers had been kidnapped by gang members and tortured brutally before being beheaded in the street. She wished it had been something supernatural, that she could get…but people? Well, people are just crazy.

Alexis got a full ride to Columbia University to study journalism in America. She got there with pure determination she thought. Alexis wanted to spread the truth. She wanted to expose every evil person she could find, and in her own way, make things right. She travelled all over the world from every worn torn, dusty desert or humid jungle to every seemingly civilized collection of states and ruthlessly dug until every perfectly human violation of humanity was sprawled across an 8 page spread. She was known for her no compromise, nose to the grown investigations she carried out for each and every story – people used to tell her to watch out, that one day she would get in so deep that _she_ became part of the story. And how right they were.

Dean answered the phone with drunken paws scrabbling to hold it to his head, "Hey Alex, haven't heard from you in a while"

"Yeah I know baby" (she called everyone baby) "how you been?"

"uhh you know…"

"Yeah me too"

"You have a case?" Dean asked…

Alexis was a journalist for too long, she always thought. She was too overwhelmed by the evil of people. She was too cynical. Supernatural things seemed so much simpler, more black and white. Alexis knew about ghosts, first hand. That was a story you didn't get to hear unless she _really_ wanted you to. That was the story that explained why Alexis quit her job and dropped off the map to start investigating the supernatural. Not to fight it exactly, but to write it. She wrote a TV show based on supernatural stories and creatures, and being an investigative journalist at heart, her writing process involved some very hands on legwork. She never told Dean that she had based the main character on him. She was sure he'd be flattered but she knew he hated what she did. Dean liked keeping it all a secret from the baying masses. But to her, supernatural stories were perfect symbols of the evil capabilities of humans. How can you watch a show, which depicts the basest evil creatures carrying out acts of violence and not realize how humans are capable of the same exact things – if not worse. She liked that fact. Alexis wasn't a hunter – in the way that she didn't actually kill or fight anything – but she had all the knowledge of any hunter you'd care to mention. Once she knew about hunters, if she ever stumbled across a live case in her investigation and research she would make sure she called someone up and pass on the kill to them once she was finished rounding up her story. She had thrown the Winchesters quite a few cases over the years.

"Uh sorta… I think…I think I stepped in some big time shit here Dean…that's why I'm callin'…I got in a bit too deep, I shoulda called someone to clean it up… but I was curious"

"Are you ok?" Dean sat up dead straight, suddenly feeling far too sober (damn, that would mean he'd need to drink even _more_ to fall asleep).

"Uh no… no baby I'm not…"

"Ok, ok don't panic where are you?"

"I don't know I just packed my things and started drivin' I think I'm still in Iowa"

"Can you get to Bobby's – in South Dakota?"

"Yeah…yeah I think – It'll take me a few hours"

"Ok, just drive straight here and we'll figure this out, ok?"

"Yeah, thanks Dean… you're a good guy you know"

Dean let out a little breath of disbelief, "See you soon" he murmured as he hung up.

Alexis rolled into Bobby's yard at 5:45 pm clutching to the steering wheel of her pale blue 1966 Ford falcon. The car's heavy front end swung around and muttered a low growl as she pulled it into park. Alexis dragged her hands from the wheel and cracked her knuckles; she had barely moved from the same position the entire drive. The back seat was littered with the evidence of a hasty departure, with her half closed suitcases bubbling over with clothing and cardboard boxes filled with sheets of paper and books.

Alexis left all her stuff in the car, apart from a small bag and a briefcase - Bobby met her at the door before she had the chance to knock.

"Alex! It's been a while" he smiled,

"Bobby, come here you old thing!" Alexis pulled him into a hug before saying, "I'm sorry I haven't spoken to you in a while… I was actually thinking about hanging it up… but then we got another season commissioned and well here we are"

"Mmm and I hear you've got yourself into some trouble" Bobby huffed affectionately.

"Uh yeah I have…. Thanks so much for letting me stay and for helping me out Bobby it means a lot" She smiled warmly "but I'm gonna need a drink pretty soon after that drive…" she looked towards where Sam was standing, "Sam!" she smiled, hugging him as he laughed nervously, "you look so different!"

"Now, where's Dean?" she asked as they moved through into the kitchen, towards the stash of beer.

"I'm here, I'm here," a deep voce muttered from the other room. Dean looked like he had just woken up from a fitful nights sleep, possibly spent lying on his face (from the looks of the faint pink impressions left on his cheek by the fabric).

As Alexis went to hug him, she was struck by how hard it was for him to smile despite the fact she was sure he wanted to (even if just out of courtesy).

"Baby you don't look so good" she said as she released him from her arms and held him at arms length to get a better look. She could smell the whisky seeping from his skin.

"Well neither do you" he joked half-heartedly.

Alexis was surprised at how different Dean was. I mean he _was_ still the same guy – still handsome, still there when you needed him, still loyal, but now…. now he looked like he'd been through a war, and maybe not just a physical one. Dean was trying his hardest to hide the shameful blackness he was feeling, he was desperate to be the same old Dean that Alexis remembered, but he wasn't sure if he could find him. But the feeling of someone needing him – in a way that he could actually help – made him feel stronger… that is, until he started to think 'what if I can't help…what if I fail'.

"So uh how's the show?" Dean asked with a hint of indignation – he always hated that TV show.

Alexis laughed, "Ah yes, I remember how much you hated my show…How many times do I got to tell you that I only _appropriate _the real stuff – anyway as far as our viewers are concerned its just a TV show…they all carry on eating their microwave dinners and no one ever knows otherwise..." Dean nodded his head as though to say he understood, but the _idea _of a TV show about all the things that he had spent his life fighting blood, tooth and nail, still annoyed him. "It's going well actually, we are onto season 5 already," Alexis continued.

"Wow that's a lot," Sam snorted.

"So what happened?" Dean asked, changing the subject to the elephant in the room as he clunked a glass of whisky in front of Alexis. He sat down close enough to her that he could smell the sweet rose perfume she always wore, and could see the faint freckles on her nose beneath her tan.

"Its season break at the moment for the show, so I was just doing a bit of research… you know gathering ideas for next season… I found this one thing… I just don't know what to make of it…"

"Ok tell us about it" Sam said, shuffling himself so that he could put his full attention on Alexis. He was so glad to have something to distract them all; she was like a savior holding a brief case full of obituaries.

Alexis looked around at their intent faces nervously before she began, "In Iowa a Mr. Angus Heller commissioned a statue of a grieving angel to be built in the town garden" she said as she threw back the whisky "– it was put up in 1926, after he died, and over the years a lot of grounds keepers reported that no grass would grow near it, that its eyes would glow red at the stroke of midnight, that anyone who looked it in the eyes would be sent mad… all sorts of stuff, some even said that any pregnant women to walk in its path would have a miscarriage… The legend also said that everyone to stay the night in its lap would slowly be sent mad until the thing came to life and killed the person brutally"

"Like Black Aggie?" Dean asked,

"Yeah except real" She nodded, "Anyway, one of the hazing rituals of one of the local fraternity's was to make a pledge sleep the night in its lap… naturally…" (She rolled her eyes) "One of the boys, Brad Myers, who stayed the night a few weeks ago is reported to have run out of the property screaming, then spent the next week having violent hallucinations and nightmares until his eyes burnt out of his skull and he died… the weird thing is, it was reported that even though the guy had never been _near _a war, he was having symptoms of severe war related trauma"

"What does that mean?"

"I have no idea… I never got that far," Alexis said suddenly sounding very grave, "I went to have a look around…at night… I made a point of not looking in its eyes but still… when …when I got home, my place was trashed and covered in grave yard dirt with the words "_War is in you mind – you can't hide – Hell is on earth' _painted on my wall in m-my cat's blood" She looked up from her glass and stared around at their faces, trying to gauge their reactions, "That's when I got in my car, and called you"

"Ok, so if you _didn't _spend the night in its lap and you _didn't_ look it in the eyes…"

"I don't know Dean! I was scared…see the thing is; I talked to other people who had been there in the middle of the night and I just can't figure out the pattern – some people go there and nothing happens, but others…"

"Ok well, you're here now, we'll keep you safe until this thing is put to bed" Dean said smiling with that classic hero expression that he could still manage to pull out when he needed to make people feel safe. This time he only held it for as long as Alexis was looking before letting it drop away to a more panicky, anxious version, it wasn't 'don't worry I'll save you!' it was 'Oh god! I _need _to save you, I need to save everyone, I need to save everyone otherwise I'm a pointless fuck up.'

"yeah… thanks…its just….I- I'd like to keep my eyes," she whispered.


	3. Chapter 3

The four of them had sat in Bobby's library all night wracking through every piece of research Alexis had collected. Dean fell asleep face first on the couch at around 3 am and was twitching noisily while the others continued. He had tried really hard to be all cool and normal and to the untrained eye he _was_, but Alexis was different, she could see it plain as day because she knew the feeling first hand. And she knew Dean…. she remembered the first time she met Dean; he was 21 years old with a schoolboy grin and huge, happy eyes… most of the time. She remembered how those big green eyes turned tiny and black when John had snapped at Dean for not being quick enough on the draw even though Dean had still managed to save his life (and hers) all Dean wanted was to make him proud. She remembered how tiny and black they went when she asked him about Sam a little while later, after he'd gone off to college. Alexis knew a little bit of everything that had happened to them since she first met them, but not in detail, it was all vague, all plot line without exposition. She knew about his deal. She knew what that meant and what he must have experienced. She knew about the apocalypse. But what she didn't know was all the thousands of little things that had happened to him, all the tiny moments of betrayal, all his feelings, the ones he guarded so heavily. She could imagine all the other things that _must _have happened, because now, finally after all these years of slowly leaking his energy, giving everything he had to everyone else, Dean actually seemed empty.

"Sam" she whispered looking towards where Dean was laying, "What's going on with Dean? Is he ok?"

Sam frowned and looked towards Bobby, who shrugged. Even if he didn't reply she already knew the answer.

"Not really," Bobby replied for him.

Alexis glared at Sam for a while, trying to read his expression, "…. What's going on with _you _then_?"_

Sam looked surprised at first but then conceded exhaustedly to her knowing eyes, Alexis always knew.

"I uh… while Dean was gone, I did some things that upset him," he flashed a look quickly towards Bobby, a look that Alexis registered as embarrassment.

"While he was gone… You mean while he was in hell? "

"Yeah…he" Sam cleared his throat quietly, "something happened to him down there…he's not the same, he isn't strong like he used to be…and with everything that's happening…"

"What did you do that's upsetting him" Alexis pushed without breaking eye contact. Alexis had a peculiar effect on people where by she was able to pry out highly guarded secrets with unusual ease.

"I uh…" he didn't finish his sentence. There was a long moment of anticipatory silence, until Alexis realized Sam _wasn't _going to finish his sentence.

"I heard about the demon blood thing Sam, you know I have ears everywhere so don't try to skirt around it! Sack up" Alexis snapped in a whisper.

Sam was shocked but replied still looking ashamedly towards Bobby, "ok… I just didn't know what else to do! Dean's not strong enough to handle the … situation… so I had to be ready," he said a little too defensively.

There was an excruciating moment of silence. "Do you know how all my brothers died?" Alexis asked sharply all of a sudden; "Every single one of them died because they were selfish," she looked angry, "they thought they were immortal"

Sam stared at her, confused as she nodded silently, "It was nothing 'supernatural' or anything but its all the same, we're all humans after all, we all have the same set of emotions…" she paused before picking up her story again "every single one of them died from drugs… a couple from using, a couple from the business but either way…I found their heads on the street outside my house back when I lived in Mexico (she pronounced it like Mehico) like a warning" she blinked back a quick tear, "and you know what all addicts have in common? Selfishness… "

Sam felt angry, he held back a defiant yell, _this was different, this was not a common situation it was his opportunity to save the world, he wasn't being selfish, _but she held up her finger to stop him and continued, "now you listen to me… I'm not saying that as an insult, it's just the way it is, ironically I think the best thing for Dean is probably also the best thing for you, if you reach out to him maybe you'll break the selfishness that is perpetuating your problem _and_ at the same time get Dean to learn a bit about taking help"

"Damn near forgot you were a writer, I was about to tell you to stop waxing lyrical" Bobby chuckled; it was strange for them to have someone looking in from the outside who actually understood, it made them relieved and uncomfortable at the same time.

"…he has built his entire sense of self on looking after other people and how good he was at his job… you know that…. Now I think that's a dangerous thing don't you? So I think you need to get your head outta your own problems and _make _him understand that everything isn't his fault"

Sam felt like crap, they all stared over at Dean who was half hidden by shadows. After a while he rolled over and seemed to notice there were eyes on him, he jumped up and stared over at where they were sitting.

"What?" he yelled hoarsely.

"Uh we are – uh - just trying to figure out the pattern…of the murders" Sam blundered, "like why does it only kill _some _people and not others?"

Dean got up and shuffled over towards them with red eyes looking at them suspiciously. He could tell they'd been talking about him, he wondered if he had a said something in his sleep.

"Well the most recent victims that I could find are Rebecca Child, 22, works at the library, no living relatives, recently had a stint in the local hospital for a suicide attempt. Then there's Matt McDonald, 45, he's the grounds keeper. He used to be a policeman but resigned after he witnessed the shooting of a young child. And last was this Brad Myers kid from the Frat. He was 18, unemployed, he lived with his uncle after his parents died"

"So what do they all have in common?"

"Nothing that I could see"

"Tragedy" Dean whispered, "that's what they have in common"

"Ok but it's a statue right? So clearly it has to be a cursed object?" Sam said quickly.

"We should just go and destroy it" Dean barked, "if it is cursed then it'll all be over and if not…"

"If not?" Alexis whispered.

"If not, we'll have to figure something else out"

Dean and Sam slumped over to the Impala, leaving Bobby and Alexis to stay behind. Bobby had warded his house and given her every protective charm and spell he knew, so it was best Alexis stayed where she was safe. Sam decided to drive, at least that way Dean couldn't pull over and escape when he tried to talk to him.

"Dean?"

"Oh here we go!"

"Dean seriously, we need to talk, don't be a dick" he could already feel himself taking up the annoyed edge in his voice that would lead the conversation towards being a pointless argument.

"Mhmm… Alexis said something right? She was always the _psychoanalyzing_ type…. Fucking writers"

"Yeah she mentioned that she was worried about you… she ripped me a new one too though don't worry" Sam laughed bitterly.

"Good" Dean mumbled,

"Listen man I talked to the doctors back at the hospital and…" Sam paused to search blindly through his duffle with one hand as he drove to find the prescription bottle, "I think they're right, I think you need help…here… the doctor prescribed this for you, I think you should at least try it"

As he said the words and handed Dean the bottle to look at, Dean sunk into the angriest, disgusted grimace Sam had ever seen on his brother's face.

"You fucking ass"

"There is nothing wrong needing help Dean…." Sam _wished _he had broached the subject differently.

"Yes there is" Dean joked.

Dean chucked the pills back over the seat and they drove all the rest of the way to Iowa in silence.

They arrived at the plot of land where the statue stood just as the sun was going down. There was a harsh wind blowing through the low trees making them rattle and hiss like warnings. The grass was damp beneath their boots as they trudged towards the creepy dark figure hunched in agony amidst the neat garden that had once been cared for by one of the victims.

"What are you so sad about?" Dean snickered at the things silvery face contorted into a grimace of pain. He looked at it closer. No, it wasn't just pain, it was _anger. _

"How the fuck are we gonna destroy it? Its like… solid"

"Yeah I thought this might be a problem" Sam said quietly, "that's why I bought the pipe bomb from Bobby's basement"

"A _Bomb_? Seriously?"

"What? Bobby has everything dude and it needs to be hot enough to burn it" Sam looked like he was thinking.

"We gotta move it first though, this is a town garden, we need to take it out to like…the middle of nowhere and blow it up" Dean grumbled.

"yeah"

Sam wrapped a chain around the person-sized statue and connected it to the back of the car. Dean slammed down on the accelerator until it flew from the base and dragged along through the dirt for a couple hundred meters. Dean didn't want to slow down too quickly incase the thing dented his car. The sound of the trees whistling angrily was getting louder. The night was lurching onwards and the shadows were starting to fall worryingly around them casting huge long fingers of darkness across more darkness as it moved towards midnight.

"Dude we need to get outta here…" Dean yelled through the open car window back towards Sam who was too far away to hear over the engine and the wind. The air suddenly became arctic around them like a blizzard of toxic, frozen mist had exploded from the skies, with it was a howling storm of wind that was throwing leaves and branches all over the formerly tidy garden. Sam panicked a little when he saw the branches flying. Dean paused in dread as he stared back towards Sam, he wet to jump from the car and run towards him but his legs were frozen,_ why can't I move_, he looked back towards Sam who was running now. Suddenly the whole world seemed to be overtaken by the piercing sound of screaming and crying, it had started rising slowly until it reached a near unbearable level, sound so loud that it was impossible to focus. Dean clutched at his head and tried to will his legs to move but he couldn't. Through the screaming he could feel the searing pain of knives dragging through his skin he looked down at his torso though tear glassed eyes, there was nothing there. Suddenly he could feel a clammy hand grabbing him on the shoulder.

_"You're weak boy, you're weak, you have a duty but you are too weak to fulfill it!" _A whining angry voice hissed at him, _"What a pathetic excuse for a soldier you are! Hell is on earth, hell is in your mind!" _

Sam couldn't see Dean through the swirling wind and fog, the back of the Impala was only just visible because of the headlight, he needed to destroy the thing quickly now, there was no time for taking it else where.

"DEAN!" He yelled, "DEAN!"

He saw his brother cowering with his hands over his ears inside the car as he approached the driver side window; he looked like he was hyperventilating. Sam reached for him and pulled him up to help set up the bomb. The sound, the wind and now the heat were unbearable. Dean wasn't sure how much of it was really there and how much of it was his brain, but he was pretty sure the heat wasn't there, he was pretty sure it was hell fire. It was making him sick with overpowering fear and dread, he could smell burning flesh, burning hair, this particular smell that he had come to know in the Pit as burning _organs_. Through it all he blindly unhooked the chain from the Impala as Sam attached the bomb, it was set for three minutes, which was certainly enough time to get out of the blast zone. They dove into the car and drove away as the sound of the thing exploding and melting, the sounds of screaming and wailing, rose and fell back in to silence.

"What the fuck man!" Sam yelled, still adrenalized, "what the _fuck _just happened"

"I have no idea…. The thing… something talked to me Sam, it touched me with its _hand _too" Dean said distractedly as he drove.

"I've never heard of any cursed object that has a physical incarnation as a human figure though… what did it look like?"

"It was a hand Sam I don't know! But it definitely talked… what if it like I dunno…tagged me?"

"What? What do you mean? No, we blew it up though"

"Yeah… I'm sure that's it"

Dean drove quietly for a while, he turned the radio up full blast in an attempt to drown out the voice that had spoken to him back at the garden and avoid talking to Sam. Sam was throwing quick, worried glances towards Dean as he watched his brothers face, he could see him thinking. Sam wanted to ask him what had happened back there, why he had found him stuck, hyperventilating in the car.

"You know I'm here if you ever need to talk" he said over the music, "I just want to help you." But Dean ignored him.

Bobby rushed to the door to let the boys in before they even reached it.

"Better come in quick" he said.

In the middle of the library room Alexis was curled in a ball crying hysterically, screaming, she was clearly seeing something no one else could.

"_Ahh dios mio… no, no, no" _she was screaming.

"ALEX!" Dean shouted holding her shoulders, shaking her, trying to get her to look him in the eyes.

"Don't, don't!" she screamed.

"Alex it's just me, it's Dean! You're ok, we've got you, come on, you're ok" he said soothingly as she slowly calmed. Her mind took a while to float back to the surface of reality. Dean could see when she was back in the room with him just by her eyes.

"What happened?" she asked, she was shaking and her face was red and wet.

"I was going to ask you the same thing" Dean said letting go of his grip on her shoulders.

"I thought… I saw… that's never happened to me before" she whispered, slightly embarrassed.

"What did you see Alex" Bobby asked.

"I saw… this man… he was telling me that I was weak and needed to be _tested_" she whispered, "he said if a soldier can't face the war in their own mind, they are good for nothing and deserve to die"

Everyone sat quietly for what seemed like a long time.

"Well one things for sure, it aint no 'cursed object" Bobby said softly.


	4. Chapter 4

"it's gotta be some sort of spirit" Bobby grumbled.

"But that doesn't make any sense Bobby, firstly it was a statue it had nothing to do with a dead person, and secondly even if it did how could it leave its haunt? It's bouncing all over the place! It crossed state lines here for gods sake!" Sam barked shaking his hands with frustration.

"I dunno! It's gotta be latching onto folk somehow… making them go mad"

"It must be an emotional connection" Alexis suggested, "It's choosing people who are emotionally vulnerable, who have experienced a trauma to _test_ – it want's to see whether or not it can drive them to giving up…"

"Yeah but what is it?"

"Or who?"

"Mother fucker why didn't I think of this earlier" Alexis shouted, "Fucking Pierre Heller! The uh - the guy who commissioned it" Alexis said as she shuffled through her papers looking for the one about him, her hands were shaking, "here… born in France in 1839…. He travelled around the world at 12, at age 20 he joined the army of Napolean III and fought again Austria, later served with General Geribaldi's forces in Italy. He came to New York in 1860, worked as a silver chaser and sculptor. He enlisted in the Union army when the civil wore broke out … which is when he began a war record so amazing that at only age 26, they promoted him to Brigadier General! He fought at Big Bethel, Richmond, the siege of Port Hudeson, the battle of Gaines' Mills…. He was wounded more than 15 times in the field but just kept going…. He moved to that part of Iowa when he was 55 and became a pillar of the community, he commissioned the statue which was called 'sorrow' to be built but wouldn't let it be erected until after he died…"

Sam considered for a moment, "Ok so what if his spirit is connected to the statue then?"

"Yeah I mean, he despised weakness, he kept fighting no matter what…apparently he psychologically tortured his cadets to weed out the weak ones"

"What a dick" Dean barked over his beer

"Yeah… it's gotta be him right? It fits?" Sam asked

"Yeah everything makes sense except how his spirit is still around when we blew that statue to shreds..."

"Where was Heller buried?"

"No one knows…. He was real weird about it"

In the wake of a moment of silence the three men jumped from their skin at the horrifying sound of Alexis descending into screaming and crying. She catapulted herself from the table and let out such a woeful shout that it curled and snaked into a horrific primal scream. She was clutching her ears as though she could hear the sound of gunfire, she was jittering, slipping away from their worried grips like a bar of soap.

"Alex!" Bobby yelled over the screaming "damn it, it's getting worse, we gotta do something _now"_

"Sam, take her down to the panic room" Dean shouted, taking charge for an exhilarated second, "at least she'll be safe in there."

Dean curled his hands into fists and let go of a deep, angry growl that he had been holding in as he watched Sam pick her up with her arms pinned to her sides, tiny as she was, and carry her down to the basement, "No! No don't touch me! No!" She was shouting. Dean was _not _going to let Alexis down, he couldn't fail again. His mind was ticking over a hundred miles a minute _What If she dies? What if I can't save her? What the hell am I going to do then? If this doesn't work I swear to god that is it, that is the end, I am sick of burying friends, I'm tired and nothing matters, what's the point if I can't save her?_

"DEAN!" Bobby shouted, he could _see_ Dean's panicked thoughts all over his face, "Focus!"

"Yeah sorry" Dean mumbled, rearranging himself to look more tense and alert.

"What are we going to do?" Bobby growled.

"We've got to find out where they buried him I guess"

Bobby flung up his arms and headed back towards the computer to keep searching for information on Pierre Heller.

"I'm just gonna go out for some air" Dean muttered, pulling his hand down his face. He left the house, not without swiping a bottle of whisky, and wandered through the yard. Empty skeletons of cars rusting and broken, cast disfigured shadows across the dirt, tangling through the weeds and smoke. The mud was congealing into thick pools across the yard so it was hard to find somewhere dry to stand. Dean stopped when he was sure he was out of sight and dropped down to the floor. Since the spirit had spoken to him he was finding it increasingly difficult to shut down the memories, everything was flooding to the surface, bubbling hot pus seeping through his subconscious mind, poisoning the air around him. He wondered if he was just getting progressively worse or if it was the spirits doing. He hoped for the latter, at least that way he could do something; supernatural things, he could understand. The air felt so thick and hot and the whisky wasn't even burning his throat anymore, in fact, he wasn't really sure if it was doing _anything_ anymore. '_The thing only takes one victim at a time'_ he reminded himself, '_I'm fine'._

"Oh but you're not are you?" Dean spun around in the direction he thought the voice was coming from but there was nothing there, he jumped to his feet holding the bottle like a weapon.

"You're not fine, in fact you are just about ready to give up aren't you?" it hissed.

"Oh yeah? And who's says that?" he asked to no reply.

"….I like you Dean, if I wasn't so caught up with that girl in there – _Oh!_ _she knows pain – _I would help you instead" the voice rushed past him.

"_Help _me?"

"Yes all I am doing is helping these people, those who know suffering I am helping them to either know their strength or accept their weakness"

"By killing them?"

"I don't kill them Dean, they kill themselves"

"Well the burnt out eyes says otherwise"

"Doesn't matter" it whispered, suddenly feeling it closer, Dean spun around again but he couldn't see anything, just whirls of frigid wind.

"But I don't need to help you do I Dean? You don't need to be mine, because you know what? When that girl fails _you are going to do my job for me, because you know you can't take much more," _with that an enormous gust of wind swept past him almost knocking him over, leaving him in rotten silence.

Dean ran back towards the house, his face was contorted into a panicked, angry scowl and he was blinking back tears, _Keep it together, _he strode straight for the basement, he needed to make sure Alexis was ok, the thing had been here, it was close, it was holding on to her. Alexis was sitting curled up on the bed inside, she felt strange and sick, her head was thumping and images of things she had long ago learned to forget were bubbling back to the surface. Dean was at the door looking at her with blood shot puffy eyes. She wondered if he'd been crying.

"You ok?" he asked.

"Mmm not really" she half smiled. Dean shut the door behind him and wandered closer.

"I'm gonna fix this don't worry" he said staring at his hands, "I'm not gonna let it get you."

Alexis turned towards him and watched his profile, his jaw was clenching beneath his cheek. She could see he was holding on to a thread of life that was hanging dangerously bare. She put her hand against his back and felt his pain, it was the sort of exhausted defeat that she had once known too.

"Dean…" she whispered, "do you want to know why I started doing what I do?" Dean looked towards her suddenly, he knew that was a story not many people got to hear.

"When I was younger, as you know, I worked as an investigative journalist, I was particularly interested in terrorist groups, corrupt governments, that sort of thing…. I used to travel all over the world to war zones, I wanted people to know what was happening in the world you know?" she paused with a strange nostalgic melancholy before she continued, "I was reporting from the war in the middle East…." She heaved out a fractured breath, Dean knew what she was saying wasn't easy for her. "Uh we got ambushed…. that's…that's when I got captured by a terrorist cell and was held in captivity 6 months..." she cleared her throat to stop her shaky voice, "they tortured and brutalised me in ways that...that are _impossible_ to describe...they starved me, raped me, manipulated me like I was an animal, i lost every ounce of dignity I had, every ounce of pride... and all the while I could hear the guns, the fighting raging in the distance and I knew people were right there"

"Alexis…" Dean began to say, but she shook her head. She was crying.

"But the government didn't save me, no-one came to get me, they all thought I was dead I think, that I'd died in the ambush… I was kept in this tiny room with dirt floors, even though it was hot outside, the room was always freezing cold, there were strange sounds, I thought I was loosing my mind… I mean that wouldn't be such a shock in a situation like that" she tried to laugh, "but then one day…. this figure appeared to me, it was a woman, she was pale and sad looking, she didn't open the door to come inside, she just…._appeared…._it turned out, she had died in that same cell and was stuck there, she told me she would get me out"

Dean was watching her as she spoke, she was crying but she looked strong, resolute.

"I did get out… obviously…she opened all the doors, she showed me a bunker, she blew up the whole fucking compound actually – once I was out ... I think she just wanted revenge on her captors"

She dried her eyes with the back of her hand "and then when I got home, I was destroyed… I decided to quit my job and I started getting into all this supernatural stuff – that's when we first met, do you remember?" Dean nodded.

Alexis turned to him, suddenly feeling slightly embarrassed and said, "You know I felt like a failure at first, I felt weak, pathetic… I drank too much, I had nightmares, I didn't know how to keep going…. But you know…. things are ok if you let them be, I'm ok" She smiled, "I'll be ok."

"This fucker thinks that I can't handle what it's throwing at me? Well I can…. _War is in your mind – you can't hide – hell is on earth_, that's what it said right? Well it's right, you _can't hide_ – you gotta face it, accept help" She was grinning now, Dean looked at her intently for a moment, suddenly he knew that she didn't expect him to save her, she could do it herself.

* * *

Dean slunk up the stairs from the basement like he was rising from the ocean depths. He thought about Alexis telling him her story, he knew that she hadn't done it for her own good but his. He felt like she'd given him something precious, a members only pass into her soul. He could see why she was who she was and what made her think or act like she did. She had been through a lot, she had been through things that would become part of her story forever. Dean realized exactly why she had told him what she had, she wanted him to see that it was only when you saw someone's pain and weakness that you could appreciate their strength.

As Dean came into the kitchen Sam exclaimed with exasperation, "Why don't we just go back to the site and look around…we haven't been able to find anything on where the guy was buried or even if he _was _buried so at this point I think its all we've got... Alexis can't stay down there forever"

Dean nodded. Sam looked worn out, black eyed, stressed, and Dean knew he was just adding to that. He wanted to walk up to him and say _I am not ok, in fact I am completely shattered and I don't feel like going on, _but its hard to say something like that. Instead he grabbed the car keys and his jacket and strode out towards the car.

The entire drive was quiet and tense. Dean was still full of shattered sympathy from Alexis's story. He wanted to hold her and tell her it was alright, he wanted to tell her he understood...which is when he realised how much he wished someone would do the same for him. Sam looked annoyed, not necessarily _at _Dean, but just in general, he was tired, he was worried about Alexis but most significantly he was worried about Dean. He had snuck into where Dean was sleeping the night before and he had seen him violently thrashing, twitching, sobbing. Sam remembered how Dean had balked at the sound of meat hissing on the stove, how shaky he was until he had a swig from his flask. He had spent the night reading articles on depression and PTSD once he was sure he couldn't find anything else on Pierre Heller. The more he read, the more signs he realised he had missed whilst he was all caught up with Ruby and he felt like shit for it. He knew that Dean would help him if he needed it so now it was his job to step up and do the same.

* * *

They checked into a motel close to the site, they were exhausted from the drive but keenly aware of the ticking clock. Dean felt sick to his stomach knowing how bad it would be for Alexis to be reliving the memories of every bad thing that had happened in her life, he knew the pain and dread of that all to well and wanted to make sure it ended soon. The motel room was annoyingly green, every surface was a different shade of green from putrid vomit green to neon green and it was making Dean feel like hurling up his lunch and the three beers he downed it with. They decided to talk to the locals and see if they could drudge up any speculation as to the after life fate of Pierre Heller's body. But before they had even had the time to dump their bags on the beds of the putrid room they got a phone call from Bobby.

'_Hey Bobby, everything ok?_' Sam said pushing the phone to his ear, _'what?' _he looked towards Dean with shocked, horrified eyes, '_what happened?' _Dean was looking at Sam begging for him to fill him in on what Bobby was saying. But from Sam's face he already knew. He knew it was something Sam was dreading having to tell him for fear of what Dean might do. Before Sam could hang up the phone a voice whispered to Dean '_I told you she would give up – now it's your turn'_

**TBC**

* * *

**A/N: Another chapter is on its way! In the meantime I would so love to hear your thoughts on the story so far! Leave me a review? x**


	5. Chapter 5

**a/n: This is a shorter chapter but i hope ya'll are still reading and still enjoying it as much as I am enjoying writing it - How about popping your thoughts down below? I need some reassurance :/**

* * *

Dean had shut himself inside the bathroom before Sam could even tell him what happened. He could only barely hear Sam shouting, banging on the door to let him in. All sounds seemed buried beneath a thick cloud of smog and looking at himself in the mirror he felt as though he was looking through the bottom of a glass filled with water. His breathing was hitching slightly as he clutched the sink and lent against it with all his weight. But his whole body was weak and limp and fell to the floor like a rag doll as his mind stuck horrid needles deeper and deeper into itself. '_You're worthless; you should be ashamed! _A voice he couldn't recognize shouted, maybe it was his own voice, he wondered. He shut his eyes in an attempt to hide but in the blackness of his skull he could see a Technicolor image of ripping, burning flesh, he was screaming for Alastair to stop, then someone was screaming for _him_ to stop, he could see the bowls of a young woman fall to his feet as he sneered down at her tear stained cheeks. He enjoyed the feeling of passing all the pain Alastair had dealt him onto another and that made him feel disgusting, it made him question who he was._ 'Sack up kid! Stop being a pansy'_ he could hear his father's voice bark. He flicked open his eyes feeling another presence in the room, it was cold and hot at the same time like the way something can be so cold that it actually burns. The face of the sorrowful angel, weeping and melting into horrendous cries of pain appeared before him, Dean jumped with shaky shock as it reached out to stroke his shoulder creepily, '_I'm going to test you Dean' _it sneered as Dean tried to squirm away,_ 'but I think you and I both know you've already lost' _Dean was paralyzed by the spirits grip as it hissed, '_You won't do what you need to do, and a soldier who doesn't obey is no use at all! You won't give up your brother even if it's for the best will you? … Maybe I should just get rid of him for you?" _It whispered bursting into a cruel cackle.

"Don't you touch him!" Dean screamed but his voice just rung out across the cold tiles of the suddenly empty room. He stood up and turned towards the door, "DEAN!" Sam shouted clawing at it.

Sam could hear his brother sobbing and shouting inside the bathroom and he wished desperately that he could put a face to the sounds now so he could know he was ok. Just as Sam was about to kick down the door Dean appeared in the opening. He was blank faced and pale but he seemed himself again.

"What just happened? Are you ok!" Sam shouted.

"Yeah dude I'm fine" Dean said with a flick of the hand and a casual smile to hide his embarrassment and terror. He couldn't hide the shakiness in his voice.

"Uh no you're really not" Sam cooed, "Dean seriously what just happened? I heard you shouting"

Dean walked slowly, achingly across the room, trying to avoid eye contact with Sam; _Maybe I should just get rid of him for you?_

"Yeah uh I – it's just…it's just… Alexis," he frowned, "I'm gonna just go out for some air… you… you go question people or something, find out where that bastard is buried" he whispered. Sam looked unconvinced and worried, as though he was dangerously close to telling Dean he shouldn't go out by himself. Dean swiped his hand at Sam as if to say _don't worry_ and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

Dean sat on the stool furthest away from any one else and rested his elbows on the sticky wooden bar top with his head in his hands.

"_You _look like you need a drink" the pretty bartender smiled. He didn't care that she was pretty, he couldn't muster the energy to flirt.

"Whisky, neat…double" he muttered barely removing his hands from his face, "and keep 'em coming." He didn't want to look at the world, there was something weirdly comfortable about putting his head in his hands – the fact that it was also quite suffocating made him wonder about his definition of comfortable. He put his hands down to pick up his drink and let the bar in all its sleepy small town glory fill his vision. As he gulped down his fifth glass of whisky he felt his mind cloud over but not in a drunk way, no it was that same sort of cloudiness that he had felt in the bathroom earlier – the voice started again, it whispered, _'Your weak, your pathetic, you may as well just fucking die, you are a disgusting excuse for a human being, try harder! You can't be bothered can you?' _

"Shhh" Dean growled quietly. But the voice continued louder and louder. _Accept it Dean, your tired, your hopeless, worthless, Sam doesn't need you, he would be better off without you, all you do is fuck things up and let people down! _

"SHUT UP!" he yelled. The bar seemed to go quiet; he could feel eyes burning into him. He looked around, embarrassed, slammed cash onto the bar and shuffled out. As soon as he was out of view he gripped his head and grimaced, now he could hear Alastair's voice, clear as a bell, _you had such promise! No matter what you do you are mine now Dean, you are my student, my design!_ Dean got into the front seat of the Impala and tried to start it but he couldn't concentrate over the sounds of screaming. He could see the shaking in his hands slowly moving up his arms and spreading throughout his body as he gasped for breath, it felt like he was sucking in petrol fumes. He needed to call Sam, he needed to tell him that the spirit had got to him and they needed to find the body soon.

"_Oh no you don't! If Sam gets the way I'll destroy him before you even blink" _

"Fuck you!" Dean shouted over the hissing. The sound died down for a moment and Dean wondered if it was over. A lady was sitting in the car next to him, staring, he realized he had been hyperventilating and cringing quite violently. He gave her a half smiling nod and pulled the car into reverse, he needed to get as far away from Sam as he could (therefore dragging the spirit with him). As he drove he laughed bitterly at the irony as he thought about the angel statue, it suddenly dawned on him how fitting it was that something like that would be the wicked, self-righteous thing to finally tip him over the edge. Heller must have been a believer in the view of angels as stern soldiers rather than the fluffy winged protectors, that was probably why he decided to construct an angel (a weeping angel – perhaps despairing at man's weakness, he now realized) as his emblem.

"_The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it" _was on replay in his head, _The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it,_ _The righteous man, is the only one who can finish it, The righteous man can finish it, finish it, FINISH IT, FINISH IT!_

* * *

Five hours later and Sam really wished he _had _told Dean to not go out alone. Five hours. _Seriously?_ How long does it take to 'get some air' (a.k.a get drunk)? Sam was fiddling nervously with his phone in his pant pocket as he walked slowly behind the tour guide at the museum of local history. The guide was a short man with spectacles that made his eyes look too big for his face and he spoke too slowly for Sam's panicked mind.

_"_Of course Mr Heller was a very religious man… very righteous"

"That's ironic" Sam muttered, thinking about Heller's practice of psychological torture both in life and death.

"Yes well he had his demons … as we all do… but otherwise he was a pillar of the community"

"Yeah so I've heard" Sam nodded. He was starting to get frustrated. He wished he could come straight out and ask the man where Heller was buried. "So when did he die?" he fished, hoping that the man would also tell him about what happened to his body when he died.

"1926 I think… there was a public ceremony in the town garden."

Sam half smiled and nodded at the old man's clueless face, he thanked him anyway and rushed out. He couldn't leave it any longer, he needed to find Dean because (although he had tried telling himself that this _wasn't _the case) Dean _had _had some sort of panic attack or flash back or _something _in the bathroom, which either meant Dean was at a crisis point or maybe the ghost had got to him too. _'Why the hell did I let him go?'_ Sam's thoughts were undulating between anger _'Why can't Dean just get his shit together!'_, sympathy, _'no I shouldn't be thinking like that… he's been through a lot, he is hurt' _and fear, _'shit, what if I'm too late or what if…what if …what if?'._

Seeing as Dean had taken the car – which Sam had only noticed when he went to leave the room to question the townspeople – Sam had to walk back to the motel. It wasn't that far but every step seemed too slow, like that weird, slow motion running that happens in dreams. He started to run instead of walking, he could see the motel now and decided to sprint the last leg. The Impala wasn't in the parking lot. He threw open the motel door just in case, but to no avail – Dean was long gone.

* * *

He was alone. He had taken a room Sam wouldn't expect, in a motel Sam wouldn't expect, in a town Sam wouldn't expect… he was totally alone. The screaming sounds, the flashes of searing pain and overwhelming feelings of failure had left him sitting curled almost into a fetal position at the base of the bed. It had been two days, two bottles of whisky and a case of beer since he left Sam and he was secretly angry that his brother hadn't found the fuckers bones yet and ended this. But he also secretly feared the idea that his brother _had _found the bones and burned them already, because that would mean he couldn't blame this mess on the ghost – it was all him, pitiful Dean. He stared at a point on the wall and turned the TV onto white noise. The wall was almost mustard coloured and there was a photo of President Bush on the wall (_why the fuck is that still there? What year is it?) _He could hear his heart beat in his throat as he tried counting backwards from 100. He couldn't get past 89 before barking out angry tears. He felt weirdly numb and yet at the same time he could feel every inch of his body, quivering, raw. He went to pour more alcohol down his throat but he had unknowingly finished the bottle. He chucked it across the room and listened to it smash into irate shards, the sound was too loud in the quiet room. He had to wait it out, he had to sit here and hope against hope that he could hold the thing away from Sam long enough for him to find the bones and burn them. He just hoped he could last that long.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean was staring down at the actuality of drinking heavily consistently for three days – bile all over your bed sheets. He wasn't sure when he had thrown up, he couldn't remember doing it, which means he must have done it while completely passed out. He realized he could have died then, passed out in total blackness, chocking on vomit until his breathing stopped. Not the most glamorous way to die but still.

Dean had no idea what day it was, what time it was or who he was anymore, it was just sleepless hour after sleepless hour punctuated by drunken blackouts. But the booze wasn't doing the job as well as he would have liked. The constant replay of sentences strung together with unmitigated self-hatred was drowning him much quicker than he thought. _"I carved you into a new animal Dean… there is no going back," _he could hear Alastair say every so often…he was right of course, there was no going back, he was irreparably damaged. He was a piss poor excuse for a son, the thought of his dad seeing him like this made him gag a little as more bile threatened to come up, his throat was burning angrily and his hands were shaking. He could feel the grip the spirit had on him, it was pushing out every single thought he had buried deep inside his brain, forcing him to think them no matter how hard he tried not to. He took a deep breath to calm himself but his nose was filled with the stench of dried sweat and vomit. The booze wasn't working anymore...

Its funny the things people will do when they're desperate. Well, maybe not so much funny as horrifically tragic and frantic. Heroin is one of those things. Dean had smoked pot as a teenager and had done acid a couple times but heroin was a different story.

Dean went out to the liquor store to re-stock on supplies, his face was hollowed out and his eyes were black, and his stubble had grown into a bramble bush. The liquor store attendant was a young woman with an eyebrow piercing, bright green hair and a snarky, opinionated attitude. She was moving product in the window when she saw him slumping towards the door, so she quickly turned the sign over to 'closed'.

"What!? You _got_ to be kidding" Dean shouted. He looked around for a moment, trying to see if there was another store in the vicinity, "fuckkkk" he growled. When he couldn't see one he started to wander searching rabidly on the horizon for a neon sign _BAR_ but before he had even walked 20 meters, he spied something much better.

In the alley behind the liquor store a young man with short, badly shaved hair covered mostly by a hoodie, was smoking a cigarette and shuffling nervously.

"Hey buddy" the guy said, "You looking for something?"

Dean stopped and considered him for a moment. He realized how bad he must look if this guy didn't automatically assume he was a policeman or something, like people usually did.

"Uh…yeah, can you sort me out?" Dean coughed.

20 minutes later and he was sitting on the bathroom floor of his motel room hunched over a folded piece of foil watching the black tar burn and bubble as he held his lighter beneath it. He sucked the warm cloud of smoke through a straw and let it spread through his body filling every pore, every cell, every inch of him, with warm relaxation, starting in his abdomen. He felt as though he was really, really, really stoned whilst having sex at the same time as eating the best pie ever made and it was weirdly exciting. He hadn't felt_ anything_ for a long time.

Everything was warm, like he was inside a womb. He was safe, protected. There was no pain, no fear or anger, no frustration, not even hunger. He felt like he was wrapped in God's warmest blanket, tranquil and quiet, like the state you go into in the first stages of anesthesia. He drifted softly through semi-consciousness like a balloon in low altitude until he gently fell asleep.

Less than a couple hours later he woke up groggily, he could feel the come down starting. It was like he was resurfacing from Deep Ocean diving. The depression came rushing back worse than before and he started crying uncontrollably, every cell in his body felt traumatized, he could even feel the nerve receptors in his brain trying desperately to pump out enough dopamine to make him stay awake. Now it was worse, now he could barely move and his head hurt and his mouth was dry and he felt a bit cramped _and _all the thoughts he had tried to drown were louder than ever.

_Nice try._

"No, no, no, no" he sobbed, "no come on please! Stop!"

_It can stop. This can ALL stop. All you have to do is take the plunge_

"…But Sam…"

_Sam doesn't need you! You just weigh him down_

"How hasn't he burnt your fucking bones yet? Why is this still happening?!"

_He's probably out looking for you, you idiot! Or maybe he's dead, who knows…_

Dean put his head back against the bed head and stared upwards, hot tears were snaking down his cheek and neck as though they were carving canyons in his skin.

"I can't," he whispered. No longer sure if he meant he couldn't do it or he couldn't _not _do it. He turned his head towards the bathroom, thinking of the rest of the heroin he had sitting on the floor with his lighter and a roll of foil he had awkwardly got from the motel clerk who knew what he was up to. He thought about how good it would be to die _really, really, really stoned whilst having sex at the same time as eating the best pie ever made_. Every thing felt achingly slow and labored and he could hear his breath and heart so loudly in his ears. Sitting in a t-shirt and boxers he looked down at his skin and wanted to rip it off. He scratched his fingernails along the tops of his legs just to see if he could feel anything. _End it, you pathetic piece of crap, just end it. _He stood up suddenly feeling much more resolute and ambled towards the bathroom. He sat down on the top of the closed toilet lid and put his head in his hands

_This is it. Are you going to make the decision? Either chose to sack up and be strong or just give up and forget about everything….what's it gonna be?_

He looked at how much heroin he had bought. The amount he had taken was so tiny compared to how much he had left so surely it was enough to do the job. He thought maybe he should down the tiny amount of medical alcohol he had in his duffle with it – he'd watched enough medical shows on TV to know that alcohol and heroin was a bad combination. His brain was dead quiet so that any thought sounded like a lone voice speaking on an opera house stage, echoing into the darkened depths.

_Do it. _NOW!


	7. Chapter 7

Two burning, deep red eyes were glaring at him through the reflection on the bathroom window. Blood seemed to be dripping from them, then rolling down the pane and over the ledge until it trickled into a dark red pool on the floor directly across from where Dean was sitting. '_The war is in your mind- you can't hide – hell is on Earth' _came the whisper, repeating in malicious menace. It was Midnight. Dean sat on the cold pitiless bathroom floor clutching a notepad and a pen and staring down at the heroin folded neatly inside plastic beside him. He breathed deeply despite his shaky lungs and tried to write but what can you say in a situation like this? _I'm sorry, I didn't deserve to be saved, please be ok without me._

He put down the paper, still not quite able to find the right words and stared down at the foil. He could see Alexis's face. She looked sadly at him as though he had failed her, he wanted to reach out and touch her, feel her warm latin skin quiver with life, but he new it wouldn't. She smiled at him sombrely for a moment and then as if a switch was flicked, her eyes clouded with horror and she began to scream, she was being torn apart, tortured, and she was screaming someones name, telling them to stop, she screamed and screamed until Dean realised that the name she was shouting was his own. Dean pressed his eyes closed, blinking back tears, _I'm sorry, _he whispered. He opened his eyes again, brought the foil closer to the base of the straw he had stuck between his teeth, and as he did everything seemed to slow down. For the first time in days everything was so unusually, unbearably quiet. He couldn't even hear the hissing sound of the tar burning. '_I didn't deserve to be saved, I should be dead anyway, it's better for everyone' _he kept breathing in. He was only half way through the amount he had by now, he wasn't sure if it was taking too long or whether time was just slowing down. There was too much space to think all of a sudden, rational thoughts started scratching through, _"Am I really this selfish?" _he thought, _"on top of everything I've done I'm just going to leave Sammy?"_ He started to cry big ugly tears, "_He doesn't need you! You just fuck everything up for everybody" _The big red eyes were glowing brighter whispering words of encouragement as his brain tried to reason with itself, and he noticed that the shrouded face of the angel was ever so slightly visible, like a grey cloud. Every so often he felt as though his body was forgetting to breathe and so he knew he was getting there. "_DO IT_! FINISH IT" he heard the spirit growl as its disembodied red eyes continued to bare down at him, "_DO IT! JUST GIVE UP_!" but as he heard those words, _just give up_ - despite the fact they were meant to sound serious - they almost sounded like something Sam would say passive aggressively to get him to _not _give up. Suddenly he looked up from the brown snake of tar hissing aggressively on the foil and he thought of Sam's face when the police called him to tell him they'd found his brothers body laying blue on a putrid motel floor (if he didn't manage to find him before then). He could see how much he would blame himself, how he would tell himself he didn't try hard enough, and although some part of Dean (most likely the part that felt betrayed and abandoned by his brother going off with Ruby) agreed, the larger part just wanted Sam to be ok. He went to take another lung full of toxic smoke; he could already feel the sweetness curling through him, lulling him to his death. But then he thought about Alexis and what she had told him, _things are ok if you let them be…you gotta face it, accept help._ He tried to keep breathing in the smoke, he tried to force his lungs to contract and suck in the poison but instead his mind began to whisper to itself, _I am NOT weak. I'm just hurting and broken … _he knew that accepting Sam's help was showing strength _not _weakness and all of a sudden the task of regaining a bit of his former vigor didn't seem so overwhelming, _all you have to do is tell him._

Just as Dean was about to put down the foil, the bathroom door was kicked down by the base of a muddy boot; A boot that was attached to the leg and body of Sam Winchester.

"STOP!" he yelled, darting towards Dean and ripping the heroin from his hands. Dean flopped almost lifelessly, sagging his head in shame as he watched Sam anxiously flush everything down the toilet.

"Sam" he shouted, "you can't be here… it's going to kill you!"

Sam gaped at Dean as he tried to hold back from crying, Dean was out of his mind.

"What? What are you talking about Dean?" Sam shouted as he shook Dean by the shoulders making his head flop about.

Suddenly Dean's eyes widened and he growled, "SAM! Get out! It's here!" Dean was giving the death stare to the pair of horrific, wicked red eyes that were looming at him again.

"Dean there's nothing here! We're alone!" Sam bellowed as he tried to stop Dean from pushing him away.

"Dean stop" he whispered.

Dean looked at him with absolute horror and shame, his eyes bulged and tightened and his chin quivered and shook and then, with failure plain on his face he murmured, "_It's too late." _

Dean's eyes rolled back into his head and he fell limp. Sam shook him again and shouted his name over and over again. Sam noticed that there was a note pad on the floor, he peered over at it and as soon as he saw that scribbled there in Dean's all capitalized handwriting was his intent to overdose, Sam knew this was not something he wouldn't sleep off. He leant close to him and tried to hear his breath but it was shallow and uneven.

"Fuck" he whimpered as he struggled to pull his phone from his pocket to dial 911, "Fuck, fuck, fuck" he muttered. Dean looked blue.

* * *

Yelling. People were frantically yelling things around him blaring sounds like shards of glass in his eardrums. He was facing upwards and moving, which felt weird and his head was spinning red, blue, red, blue. Then flashes of ceiling lights, those long fluorescent ones that are only ever in official type places, were searing through his state of semi-consciousness. He saw Castiel for a moment, looking at him with his perpetually worried, blue eyes._ Why didn't you help me? _he felt himself whisper, _why didn't you do anything._ Faces of people he didn't recognize hovered over him talking like they were under water. Castiel whispered, touching his softly on the hand, _because we knew you'd make the right decision - I know you'll always make the right decision. _Then his chest tightened with an awful cramping, burning pain in time to robotic screaming coming from something close to him. The rest was blackness.

* * *

_This is the worst hangover ever. This is a nuclear hangover, a hangover to end all hangovers, what the fuck, god what is this? _His eyes were trying to refocus through the dull, throbbing pain behind them, his throat was so dry and every muscle in his body was aching. He blinked open his eyes and saw the heart monitor and the tubes and the hospital sheets, _ohhhh shit. Not a hangover._

"Dean?" Sam was sitting beside him with his head resting against one hand propped up on the arm of the chair. He could feel Dean waking up.

"mhmm" was all Dean could muster and it came out like his jaw had been sowed shut. Sam gave Dean a few moments to fully wake up, his eyes were still half shut and sucked back into his blackened sockets. Everything was slowly coming back to him, and he wished he could just fall back into the blackness of sleep. He was embarrassed.

"How're you feelin?" Sam whispered. Dean was half-surprised that Sam wasn't yelling.

"What happened?" Dean grumbled. Sam cleared his throat quietly, he looked like he'd been crying.

"I found you in the bathroom, you OD'ed... your heart stopped a while back and they had to assist your breathing"

"Oh"

"Oh?" Sam shot a pained look at Dean, "oh?! You tried to kill yourself!" Dean cleared his throat awkwardly and tried to think of what to say.

"Sammy… it- it wasn't like that"

"Oh really? How was it then?"

Dean paused and took a hesitant breath as he looked at his brother's worried, creased forehead, "It was the spirit, it got to me… it dragged up every fucking memory, every thought that it could possibly use to destroy me and it played them over and over and over _and over _and it threatened to kill you – it knew what to say to get to me… I don't know what happened" Dean furrowed his brow and his eyes flicked as he tried to remember the past few days, it was all a weird, frantic blur. Suddenly everything he had done seemed stupid and irrational, _why didn't I just tell Sam what was happening? Why the fuck didn't I do anything? __Oh my god, I was completely out of my mind._

"Dean. " Sam said, sounding very severe, "I burned his bones days ago."

Dean turned sharply and stared at the him, "No but…When?"

"The day that you left – later that day I talked to a man at the local history museum and he told me that when Heller died they had a public ceremony in the town garden where the statue was…. It took me a while but when I realized you were gone I pieced it together – he was buried _under _the angel"

Dean closed his eyes and let out a sharp exhalation, "no…but…its been haunting me Sammy, you must have missed something"

"Dean. It can't have been, I mean I burnt him and there is nothing else holding him here – I _saw _the spirit scream and go up in flames – it's gone, its dead Dean"

"No, no Sam it's been making me see things and hear things - like _hell_ things" Dean was almost at the point of tears. Sam was leaning on the bed, Dean could tell he must look insane because Sam wasn't yelling and he was very subtly touching his hand.

"Dean. When I found you, you were adamant that was something there but I swear to you there wasn't" Sam looked sympathetically at his brothers confusion, he didn't really want to have to tell him the next part, "Dean, this was all _you"_

* * *

There were a lot of questions and doctors after that. The psychiatrist that had tried to talk to him last time he was there came in, he seemed relieved that Dean was back.

"You're on a 72 hour hold for suicide watch" he said quietly without the judgement Dean was expecting, "I think we should have a bit of a talk about what happened, don't you?" as he sat down on the edge of the bed beside Dean's feet. Dean closed his eyes and let out a long breath, he remembered why he had decided not to go through with it. He was going to stand up and be strong and that meant admitting his weakness.

Sam stayed in the room as the doctor asked Dean questions about what had happened. He tried not to cry as he listened to Dean quietly admit that he couldn't remember much of the last few days, that it was just a big blur, that he had spent endless hours curled up on the floor of a motel he couldn't identify whilst thoughts of how he deserved to die played on replay through his mind, that he had tried to drown out the sounds and fall asleep with alcohol and then when that didn't work, heroin, and that he had been having vivid flashbacks and nightmares of his time being tortured (Sam was thankful that Dean had managed to come up with a lie despite everything - he told the doctor he had been kidnapped by an insane Satanic cult - which actually made Sam kind of chuckle internally, it was funny in a morbid sort of way).

But then the doctor said, "Because of the suicide attempt, and the symptoms we observed last time you were here I have to tell you that I am now certain that you are suffering from severe Depression and PTSD and you _definitely _need to be medicated, for your own safety and well being" the doctor smiled a little sympathetic smile, "so we should talk about options for that soon." Every word of that sentence was like a dagger to the gut for Dean. Although he wasn't surprised at the doctors words, saying them had made it too real. He started to cry, but coughed and grumbled to force the tears back. The actuality of everything suddenly set him a back. He felt choked, as if someone had punched him in the throat.

"Ok" he whispered making Sam jolt with surprise, _what!?__  
_

When the doctor left Sam finally spluttered out what he had been dying to say, "Dean, are you seriously agreeing with what the doctor said? ... _seriously?" _

Dean considered what to say for a while. "Honestly, the past few days was the most terrifying experience of my life... and we've gone up against some scary sons of bitches" he laughed, "The things I was thinking and experiencing, holy shit man it was... crazy..." Sam was frowning despite Dean's attempt to be slightly more light hearted. Deep down, Dean knew he really needed to be serious. He owed his brother that much.

"Sam" Dean said, suddenly firm, "I know this doesn't make it much better but just when you came in, I had decided to not go through with it."

Sam watched his brother as he spoke, trying desperately not to cry. Sam didn't say anything for what seemed like a long time, and then whispered, "…Why?"

Dean shut his eyes and grimaced, he could see Alexis smiling at him and he forced his mouth to open and pushed the words out, "because – I" he cleared his throat, "I know I'm not ok… I know that, really I do – I mean, obviously…" he said gesturing around the room, "I felt like I didn't deserve to be alive because I was _weak_ but then I realized ... doing what I was going to do was what was weak… and I" Dean didn't continue, he couldn't speak through the lump in his throat. Sam searched Dean's face, he knew exactly what his brother wanted to say, _'and I wanted to prove to you and myself that I was still – that I am still -strong, by telling you that I know I need help'_. He was looking down at his hands. I_t's only when you know someone's pain and weakness that you can appreciate their strength, _he just hoped Sam would see it that way too.

"I know I need help" the word _help_ almost disappeared in his throat as he said it, "I know I can't ...go on like this... it just stupid"

Sam smiled and patted his brother softly on the forearm, it was the strongest he'd seen his brother in a long time.

"So you'll let me help you then?" Sam smiled, "No bitching? you'll do what me and the doctors tell you?"

"Yeess" Dean moaned.

"You promise you'll do what I say? Cause you know I only want what's best for you... you just have to trust me"

"Sam!" Dean rolled his eyes, "Don't make me change my mind" he smiled, "I_ gotta_ do what you say... cause you never know - one day maybe I'll be the one dishing out the help to _you"_ Dean grinned, half-joking, half-serious as he looked down at his brother sitting on the plastic green hospital chair. He looked exhausted. Dean continued, "...because I know_ I_ would want you to accept my help... you'd trust _me _wouldn't you?"

Sam tried his best to smile, but deep down he wasn't so sure that he would.

* * *

**a/n: That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed - ****I kind of want to write a bit more on Dean's recovery .. mmm i dunno...i will if anyone is interested in reading that, so let me know.**

**I wanted to end this with that last line because I think it would have had a nice symmetry and sense of foreshadowing if Dean had gone through all this and then had to help _Sam _in a few episodes time with the Demon blood detox thing - In my mind it would have made sense as to why Dean was understanding of Sam's helplessness and it would have been as though he was returning the favour. **

**Anyway please leave a review, it would make a girl veryy happy :)**


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